About.
Hey there. I'm James (JC) Zabel, a UX professional based in Charlotte, NC. I hold a BS in Industrial Engineering and an MS in Human Factors Psychology, both from Clemson University (Go Tigers).
With 15+ years of experience spanning corporate giants and scrappy startups, I've had the chance to work on everything from factory automation to green energy to defense contracting to IoT cloud platforms and consumer electronics.
I'm always looking for a challenge and looking to make a difference, building products that real people actually want to use.
Career
Senior UX Designer → Senior Design Manager
Microsoft
Leading a team of 6 designers and UX researchers across Azure, driving design for internal field tools and Azure Advisor, helping customers optimize workloads based on their business needs. Work spans multiple organizations and PM, engineering, and UX disciplines. Recognized with Manager of the Year for delivery and people leadership.
UX Engineer → UX Manager
SnapAV / SnapOne
Founding member of the OvrC team, starting as the lone designer and wearing every hat: design, user testing, front-end, back-end, QA, and feature development. Helped take it from an idea to the industry-leading integrator management platform supporting 20M+ managed devices globally. Built the design system across all product lines and provided strategic design support for the $150M+ Connected Device category.
Human Systems Integration Engineer
Lockheed Martin
Modernized combat system interfaces for the Aegis BMD 5.1 program, updating legacy systems to a more modern architecture. Cut my teeth on rapid prototyping, user testing with active duty sailors, and iterating based on direct operator feedback.
Human Factors Engineer
General Electric
Worked in green energy, focused on the wind sector. Led risk assessments and built mitigation programs to reduce issues across multiple sectors nationwide.
Skills
Available for the interesting stuff.